5 Steps to finding your brand voice
If your logo didn’t appear with your content, would your audience know it came from your brand? Would someone viewing your content on multiple channels know it all came from the same brand?
If you’re not careful, you can end up with a random assortment of voices and tones in the content produced across your communication channels. The content won’t provide a consistent picture of your brand or even the same use of language.
You may ask why this matters. This inconsistent brand experience comes across as confusing for your audience BUT a brand voice that is consistent enables your brand to be an easily identified and authoritative industry source.
Here are five steps to establish, create, and maintain a brand voice to drive consistency across your communication channels.
1. Describe your brand voice
Get together with your communications team and brainstorm. If you have a brand guide, use this as a starting point.
Ask the question - if your brand was a human how would you describe its personality to someone? Describe your competitors as people, too. How do your brand’s personality traits make you different?
Once you’ve come up with the main characteristics, define each one in detail. How do these characteristics show up in how you communicate with your audience? How do they come across in the kind of content you create? How do they appear in your focused topics?
2. Create the brand voice chart
With your brand’s voice defined, illustrate how it should appear in your content. This brand voice chart is an essential reference tool to ensure all content consistently uses the same voice with the same message.
3. Conduct a content audit
Gather as many types of content, from videos to web pages and emails to social media. Now, cast a critical eye over the content.
Identify:
which examples could have come from any of your competitors?
which pieces are unique to your brand – do these examples align with your brand voice?
4. Ensure all content creators understand how to put the brand voice into action
You’ve defined your voice and tone and shown it in an easy-to-understand chart. How do you get everyone to use it? Engage with anyone who creates content or communications – and walk them through the chart.
Go through the examples of content that hits the mark and work out a plan for how to revise existing content that doesn’t reflect the defined voice.
5. Revise the brand voice
A brand voice chart is not a set-it-and-forget-it tool. As your brand messaging evolves or new competitors come into your market, refresh it with new examples. This can be done by conducting a yearly audit to ensure your brand voice remains on point.
Adapted from Erika Heald’s article “5 Steps To Find Your Brand Voice”, published on 6/4/2022 at www.contentmarketinginstitute.com